Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Pg. 99: Lawrence S. Wittner's "Confronting the Bomb"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement by Lawrence S. Wittner.

About the book, from the publisher:
Confronting the Bomb tells the dramatic, inspiring story of how citizen activism helped curb the nuclear arms race and prevent nuclear war. This abbreviated version of Lawrence Wittner's award-winning trilogy, The Struggle Against the Bomb, shows how a worldwide, grassroots campaign—the largest social movement of modern times—challenged the nuclear priorities of the great powers and, ultimately, thwarted their nuclear ambitions. Based on massive research in the files of peace and disarmament organizations and in formerly top secret government records, extensive interviews with antinuclear activists and government officials, and memoirs and other published materials, Confronting the Bomb opens a unique window on one of the most important issues of the modern era: survival in the nuclear age. It covers the entire period of significant opposition to the bomb, from the final stages of the Second World War up to the present. Along the way, it provides fascinating glimpses of the interaction of key nuclear disarmament activists and policymakers, including Albert Einstein, Harry Truman, Albert Schweitzer, Norman Cousins, Nikita Khrushchev, Bertrand Russell, Andrei Sakharov, Linus Pauling, Dwight Eisenhower, Harold Macmillan, John F. Kennedy, Randy Forsberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Helen Caldicott, E.P. Thompson, and Ronald Reagan. Overall, however, it is a story of popular mobilization and its effectiveness.
Read the preface to Confronting the Bomb, and learn more about the book at the Stanford University Press website.

Learn more about Lawrence S. Wittner's scholarship and political activity at his faculty webpage and Wikipedia page.

The Page 99 Test: Confronting the Bomb.

--Marshal Zeringue